[Footnote 17: A Baptist divine of much distinction: a native of South
Carolina but long settled in Baltimore.]
* * * * *
=_Henry Ward Beecher, 1813-_= (Manual, p. 480.)
From the "Star Papers."
=_47._= A PICTURE IN A COLLEGE AT OXFORD.
I was much affected by a head of Christ. Not that it met my ideal of
that sacred front, but because it took me in a mood that clothed it with
life and reality. For one blessed moment I was with the Lord. I know
him. I loved him. My eyes I could not close for tears. My poor tongue
kept silence; but my heart spoke, and I loved and adored. The amazing
circuit of one's thoughts in so short a period is wonderful. They circle
round through all the past, and up through the whole future; and both
the past and future are the present, and are one. For one moment there
arose a keen anguish, like a shooting pang, for that which I was; and I
thought my heart would break that I could bring but only such a nature
to my Lord; but in a moment, as quick as the flash of sunlight which
follows the shadow of summer clouds across the fields, there seemed to
spring out upon me from my Master a certainty of love so great and noble
as utterly to consume my unworth, and leave me shining bright, as if it
were impossible for Christ to love a heart without making it pure and
beautiful by the resting on it of that illuming affection, just as the
sun bathes into beauty the homeliest object when he looks full upon it.
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